Low Days, Healing Days
by atyler4474
Summary: Sodapop and Ponyboy (ages 18 and 15) both come down with strep throat, brought on by post-traumatic depression. Darry (age 21), has his hands full trying to devise methods for curing them.


Soda sat listlessly in his chair, barely picking at his breakfast porridge. Darry and Ponyboy, in remembrance of how their fights in the previous year had made Soda feel ripped apart as well as disgracefully neglected, looked upon him, trying to decipher Soda's sorrow.

"Soda? What's wrong?" inquired Pony.

"It's just the anniversary of the breakup with Sandy-and (he continued with a swallow) of what happened to Dally and Johnny last year."

Ponyboy put his hand on his older brother's shoulder. "I miss them too."

Darry, their eldest brother, looked again, more closely this time, and laid his hand on Soda's cheek, then on his own.

"You feel a little too warm to me as well."

Darry then got up, left momentarily, and returned with a thermometer.

Once it beeped, Darry studied it with worry.

"This isn't good, Soda. You have a 100 degree temperature. I think you should stay home today."

"Oh, poor Soda!" said Ponyboy.

"Darry-your work-we can't _both_ miss work!" Soda stated.

"Are you sure you'll be all right here by yourself?"

"Yes, I _am_ 18 now you know."

"Yes, I know, but I'll check on you after my shift ends, okay? Ponyboy, you need to eat and get ready for school."

20 minutes later, Darry was at his roofing job after having dropped Ponyboy off at his high school, and Soda lay asleep on the sofa, wrapped up in an old sky blue flannel blanket. He ended up sleeping for most of the day.

Darry, in contrast, was enduring his usual grueling labor of hauling roofing bundles up ladders.

Ponyboy, meanwhile, was having an unusually awful day at school.

First off, he too was depressed over the anniversary of Dally and Johnny's deaths, and even more so over the death of the Curtis brothers' parents. He wasn't able to concentrate in his math class, and his teacher yelled at him for not paying attention, while the other students laughed at him. Then, some Soc deliberately tripped him in the hall. "Look at the spaz greaser!" he jeered at the startled and angry Ponyboy on the floor. That brought on more cruel laughter from bystanders. Finally, a third boy stole his sack lunch, and Ponyboy had no money to purchase a new lunch with. He had to go without.

When the day finally ended and he and Darry arrived back home, Ponyboy stumbled over a step and landed on his still tender knees on the porch. Darry noted how Pony, instead of getting back up as usual, continued to kneel there, his head down in an attempt to hide an onslaught of tears.

"Ponyboy?" asked Darry with concern in his voice. "What's the matter? You didn't hurt yourself _that_ badly, _did _you?" He reached down with his hand and helped his younger brother up, leading him into the house. Once inside, Pony could no longer keep back his sobs. He wept out all that had gone wrong for him that day, about missing Dally and Johnny, and finally he cried pathetically "I want Mom and Dad! I want Mom and Dad!"

"Yes, I miss them too, little buddy," Darry responded both sadly and soothingly, rubbing Ponyboy's back as he wept in Darry's lap.

"Me three," Soda said looking with grief upon the scene, with tears in his own gold-brown eyes, making them look like wet tiger's eye stones.

Ponyboy felt guilty over that, knowing that his middle brother had already felt bad and that the tearful outburst had made Soda feel even worse, but Pony couldn't help himself.

When at last he had all but exhausted himself, he whimpered "My throat hurts. It hurts a lot."

"So does mine-has all day," said Soda.

"Poor Soda and Ponyboy, they need so much more in their lives besides suffering," Darry thought gravely. "I think you two both need some horehound drops and chamomile herbal tea with honey," he stated aloud.

Soda and Pony were indeed better after the tea and drops-with chocolate chip cookies as an added bonus-that is, at least for the night.

The following morning, though, they _both _woke up with 100 degree fevers, and burning throats.

Darry gave them citrus fruit, as well as more horehound drops and tea, but when their same ailments still persisted into the third day, Darry took them both to the doctor, where they were both prescribed antibiotics-and both diagnosed with strep throat.

It was a long week to follow for the Curtis brothers-with Pony and Soda miserable with disease and post traumatic depression, and Darry doing his best to juggle both his job responsibilities and tending to his two invalid younger brothers. To alleviate their discomfort, Darry brought them fruit smoothies and items with which to engage in quiet activities (e.g. one CD of soft soothing music for each of them, photos of horse ranches for them to look at, the afore-mentioned blue blanket for Soda to curl up in, along with Western Horseman magazines to look at, and the old quilt their mother had made for Ponyboy to snuggle under, plus books with classical paintings for him to peruse) By the end of the week, the antibiotics had done their work and Soda and Ponyboy were finally well again, both in body and in spirit. Darry, however, had one more remedy in mind.

Upon the arrival of a sunny Saturday morning when they were all off from work and school, Darry announced, "We need a change of scene. Let's all take a day trip today to go out for a long hike in the countryside, with burgers, milkshakes and hot chocolate at the roadside restaurant on the way home."

So they did-and they all enjoyed themselves.


End file.
